Thinking Anew: We have forgotten how to walk lightly on the Earth

During the Covid pandemic Archbishop Rowan Williams noted in Candles in the Dark that during the various lockdowns, with human activity restricted, wild animals began to extend their habitats; dolphins were seen in the canals of Venice, green woodpeckers in the grounds of a Cambridge college and birdsong was easier to hear thanks to reduced traffic noise. He quoted a Canadian poet, Jan Zwicky, who had written about the loneliness of human beings who are rapidly stripping the world of countless forms of animal and plant life, suggesting that part of the malaise of the contemporary mind is that we’re feeling ‘homesick’ for the company of other life forms.

Those who have animal pets will know how much they can enrich our lives, something also recognised in nursing homes and hospices. Animals can also assist people with special needs such as blindness or epilepsy. Some of that support is instinctive, as I witnessed in the special care given by an ordinary farm dog to a child with life-challenging issues.

Some years ago in this column I introduced the English anthropologist Dr Jane Goodall who, in a 60-year study of social and family interactions of chimpanzees in Tanzania, discovered that it wasn’t only human beings “who have personality, who are capable of rational thought [and] emotions like joy and sorrow”. She discovered that they could make and use tools, a skill once assumed to be exclusive to humans.

She came to my attention recently when I read reports of what she, in her 90th year, had to say at this year’s gathering of the World Economic Forum in the small Swiss ski town of Davos in January. This annual event brings together major commercial and political interests.

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She told a gathering that our planet is in danger because of human greed and that this was affecting people badly, especially the young. “They were telling me,” she said, “that they had lost hope because we had compromised their future. But we haven’t just compromised their future – we’ve been stealing it, and we’re still stealing it today.” She challenged the commercial interests and personal lifestyles that threaten the future of the planet. For her it is not ours to destroy. Her engagement with nature has led her to the conviction that there is a higher authority: “I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I’m out in nature. It’s just something that’s bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it.”

This is not just an economic or political failure; it is also a spiritual failure by those who think the planet exists purely to serve human interests

Our political masters regularly promise “to grow the economy” so that we can have more and more and we like that idea. But there are limits, according to David Attenborough: “We have a finite environment – the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.”

But this is not just an economic or political failure; it is also a spiritual failure by those who think the planet exists purely to serve human interests. In a psalm (147) appointed for tomorrow, people of faith are reminded that God engages with his whole creation in all its complexity. He not only “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds”; he also “covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills. He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.”

It is understandable that in an age of amazing progress in science and technology we have been tempted to believe that we are in control when we are not. Whereas the psalmist of old believed that “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it,” too many today believe the earth is theirs and they can do what they like with it.

As the British economist Barbara Ward put it: ”We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the Earth as its other creatures do.”